We were young once
by LilyPotter1417
Summary: Is there more to Argus Filch than a grouchy old man? Read and you'll see! Please review!
1. Letter Day

_A/N This is a short two-chapter story about Filch. I thought he deserved something, and figured he was more that a grouch old man. This is a version of what I think happened in his life. _

_Disclamer: I wish, I wish that I was JK Rowling... but then again, don't we all? This is all hers.  
_

We were young once; I remember it well; sometimes as if it were yesterday, sometimes as if it were someone else's fond memory that I was intruding on. We were young for a rather short period of time, and that time elapsed much quicker than either of us would have liked. I will admit that after the time we were truly young we had some moments of pure youthful energy, love, and passion. They passed quickly. But we were young once; I remember it well. When did it stop? We were mere children; her, eleven as of the thirteenth of that month. I, eleven the fourteenth of the next. I had never believed that one day could change a life as it did in the _Tales of Beetle The Bard_, but I figured out the truth to those fairy tales on that particular day.

It was July the twenty-first, and I had positioned myself as close to the open window as I could get, sitting in a straight-backed chair, the back slightly cracked, paint peeling, that was shaking slightly thanks to my fists pounding quickly on the kitchen table and my scrawny body bouncing up and down with un-controllable excitement. I heard a slight whooshing sound and turned to see a plate piled high with eggs, bacon and potatoes that my mom was conducting towards me with her oak and unicorn tail hair wand. It landed smoothly with only a slight sliding noise as it came to a halt right in front of me.

"Eat up! Today's a big day!" I grinned at my mum and turned to my plate, not noticing the slight hint of worry in my mother's eyes. Quite frankly, I was too excited to eat, but I obeyed my mum and began to gobble down my eggs as fast as I could, all the while stealing excited glances at the window every few seconds. I was just devouring my last potato, when my front door banged open and before I could guess who it was I saw a blur of a blue and yellow dress and before I could greet her she plopped down in the chair across from me positively glowing. I realized again that she was beautiful, with her cheeks rosy, and her brown curls bouncing around her shoulders. I smiled hugely at her and we both looked out the window at the same time.

"Yours come?" I asked biting my lip in anticipation for her answer.

"Nope, yours?" I shook my head.

"But my mum said that they usually come from ten to two, and it's-" She looked over at the clock, "Exactly noon, so in less than two hours we'll be official Hogwarts students!" I whooped with joy, it was what I had dreamed of-we had dreamed of actually-for our whole lives. We were silent for a minute, just staring out the window, waiting for the tawny owls we had heard so much about that would undoubtedly be making their way to my window at any moment. She lived right next door, and we would see her owl at her window through my window.

"Gryffindor right?" I asked, already knowing the answer, simply trying to cover the nerves spreading around my body as I stared at the owless open window.

"Of course!" She answered like there was no other choice in the world. "And you?" She said grinning.

"Gryffindor all the way. Daring, nerve and chivalry set Gryffindors apart." She smiled and nodded and we both turned our attention to the open window once again. We lapsed into silence and waited. The second hand on the clock seemed to be ticking faster and louder than normal. The minutes ticked by. Time went faster. My mind began to wonder why no letter was falling into my arms. We waited more. We occasionally exchanged glances; at the beginning the looks were gleeful and excited, as the day progressed, the glances were wrought with worry. One o'clock came and went. The hour between that and two o'clock seemed to pass at the speed of light and before we knew it, it was a quarter past three and we remained letterless. I did not realize it, but for most of the time we had been waiting, my mother had been standing, a little ways outside of the kitchen anxiously waiting herself, and at three thirty she came into the kitchen with a resigned look on her face. She walked up to the table and sighed loudly to get our attention. We both jumped in our seats, turning our attention from the window to her. She looked sadly at us.

"Mum, where are our letters? Irma's mum said they would be here ages ago." I looked at my mum with that expression that almost all children under the age of twelve had. The, there's-a-problem-tell-us-the-answer expression. Today would be the first time that expression failed me; the first of many more to come. My mum looked away for a second and then back at me.

"Look, Argus, Irma, you're both very mature and I think you can handle this." We looked at her questioningly, then at each other with the same expression and back at my mother. "I probably should have told you this when I first suspected it, but me and Irma's mother," she looked at Irma and then back at me, "have suspected it for a rather long period of time. It seems that while many other of your friends will be getting their letters today and already have, you will not."

"Why? Why mum?"

"Well, it does seem rather odd that there would be two of you in such close proximity... Next door neighbors even, but," my mother seemed to be having some sort of internal war with herself, and was looking away from us again, mumbling incoherent words that were certainly worrying me and my companion more than was probably necessary.

"What is it, Ma?" My mum looked up again and answered me in a rush.

"Well, dears, it seems that you are both what the wizarding world calls, Squibs." I stared at her, having no idea what she was talking about, but Irma clapped her hands over her mouth and gasped, looking more horrified than I had ever seen her look in my life. She looked at me, tears already forming in her eyes.

"What's a Squib?" My mum bit her lip, but answered immediately.

"A Squib, to put it bluntly, is a man or a woman, born to two parents with magical abilities who possesses no magical talents themselves." I was still a bit confused; until that moment, I did not know that was possible. Irma had been silent for a very long time, but she spoke now in a slightly hysterical tone.

"But, no! We can't be! We just can't! All our friends aren't! What are we going to do with our lives? We have nothing, we," but I cut her off, still not quite understanding.

"So, what you're saying is that we're like... like the opposite of muggle born. Instead of a witch or a wizard born to muggles, we're muggles born to witches and wizards. We have NO magical abilities?" I looked at my mother.

"I'm afraid so, dear." I felt like I was being pushed down under water and no one would let me come back up for air. I couldn't breathe right, or think straight. I was half expecting my mother and Irma to suddenly start laughing and pull out our Hogwarts acceptance letters. This had to be some sick joke, I thought. As I sat there, and thought over our lives thus far, I realized it wasn't

I thought about how over the past few years, me and Irma's other friends had started to developed magical powers that they couldn't control. Like the time when we were nine that Martin Perkins had come to my doorstep with Artemisia Lufkin, having both accidentally magicked themselves into my clothing. We had laughed for a good twenty minutes and they had made me promise that if I ever did something like that, I would be sure to tell them immediately. I never did. Or the time when we were seven, and I had been reading in my bedroom and heard a loud crash on my lawn, only to run out and find that Laura Pettigrew had somehow ended up on my roof and then fallen off, but remained unscathed. We, again, laughed for a good while and she promised that if I ever did something like that, I would tell her so we could compare experiences. Nothing of the sort had ever occurred for me. Indeed, there were countless instances in which our friends had done magic before. Our parents had always told us we were just late bloomers, our time would come sooner or later. It apparently would not. I was suddenly angry.

"How could you!" I yelled, glaring at my mother. "All this time, you knew we were, we were _Squibs_ and you never told us!" My mother opened her mouth to defend herself, but Irma beat her to it.

"Don't blame your mother, Argus. It's not her fault, she was just trying to protect us, and now," But suddenly she burst into tears. I sat there, stunned for a moment; Irma never cried. Luckily, my gentlemanly instincts kicked in almost immediately and I got up, walked around to the other side of the table and pulled her into my arms. We stayed in this position for a long time, my blue button-down shirt getting steadily wetter with her tears and my mind forming more and more dreadful possibilities of what could happen to us as Squibs. What if we had to get muggle jobs, marry muggles, go to muggle school? What if the world we had grown up in and belonged in shunned us? Did we belong in this world? If we were not wizards and witches, did we belong in their world? What if we were meant to be muggles? What if that's what we were supposed to be? Muggles. Irma seemed to read my mind; she always did, and stopped crying. She looked at me, straight into me with her perfect blue eyes.

"We can't let this stop us Ar, we really can't. We still belong here, don't you think?" I stared at her. Why was it that she always knew what to say and think? Whenever I had a problem, she always had the answer I was looking for. In truth, I wasn't so sure that we did belong there, but when she said we did, I was more convinced. I smiled weakly at her.

"Yeah! Of course! I mean, just because we can't do magic doesn't mean we can't be around it, right?" She grinned.

"Exactly!" I smiled back thinking, if only for a moment, that things might just turn out okay.

A/N: REVEIW! It's my first story of hopefully many more to come... I'd like some motivation. :)


	2. Seventy Two Years Later

Seventy-two years later, as I walk dejectedly around the entrance hall of Hogwarts picking up bits and pieces of the mountains of debris that line the hall with my hands, waiting for some undeserving wizard or witch to come along and vanish it all without a thought, I remember that day. That was the last time I was truly young, and I miss it. I think of what we were then, and what we are now. Time, and disappointment have made us bitter. And who could blame us? She sits in her library all day, trying and failing not to listen to the immature students discuss how they will use the spells in the books there for their benefit. And I and Mrs. Norris prowl the hallways, watching as people years and years younger and less mature than me flick their wands without a care. And what am I to do?

For years, all I did was scold them playfully and tell them not to do it again. But after a while one gets more than tired of watching. I began to yell at the students, then to punish them severely. For what? Satisfaction? Possibly. When I remember that day yet again, I realize how wrong we truly were. It is not possible to be part of a world that you don't belong in, can't belong in. And no one understands, that even more than watching stupid immature students bewitch suits of armor and my cat, it's simply unbearable to watch on a day like today. The entire castle alight with spells of all types. Bodies flying against walls, never to be woken again. Curses shouted at the tops of their lungs, all done without a care. Everybody fighting desperately for his or her lives and I remain powerless. There's nothing I can do to help, and the misconception of all of them, is that I want to help. And now that the final battle has been won, all of the undeserving witches and wizards go back to bed, only thinking about their victory against you-know-who, leaving me to clean up the mess when I simply can't.

Seeing all of those people fight tonight has made me wonder. What if I could do magic? Would I have changed what had happened tonight? Could I have saved someone's life, or would I have been killed? Because the truth of the matter is, I'm useless. There's no one in this world that would be in any way different, if I were not in it. They would all go about their easy, satisfying lives; their thoughts not even touching upon Argus Filch. Because that's already what it's like. My thoughts are interrupted by the sound of short high heels clicking on the marble floor. I turn around and even with her gray hair and wrinkled face; I still think she's beautiful. She smiles at me.

"We won Argus!" She has reached me now and stops, still smiling. I try and fail to smile back. I've missed her. At the beginning of our time "teaching" at Hogwarts we were still best friends. As time went on, however, we became more and more distant, and now we hardly speak at all. That is possibly the thing I miss the most about being young.

"Yes, we did." I'm still trying to smile, but I fear that it's coming out as more of a grimace.

"What's wrong? Aren't you happy that it's over?" I feel like she already knows the answer, but of course she asks anyway. That's the type of person she is. I'm about to make up some story about just being very tired, and having a lot of things to clean up and that she should really go, but I know she won't buy it so I don't.

"How can I be happy when I did nothing to help? How can I be rejoicing when I made no difference to the cause?" Irma's face falls.

"You did make a difference to the cause." I look at her incredulously.

"Make a difference? I was probably more of a hindrance than help. Squibs are useless. Not just in battle, but in life. Who in this world have I changed? Harry Potter, he changed the world and he's only seventeen. Everyone at this school has changed the world in their own way, and the world would probably be better off without me in it. I'm useless." I had expected Irma's face to fall even more and for her to give me some stupid "everybody's special in his or her own way story", but she doesn't. Instead, her face becomes angry and she glares at me.

"There are a few things wrong with what you just said," She's almost yelling and I'm using all the strength I have not to cringe. "One, even if you didn't make a difference to the cause, you are the cause! We are the cause! All those people were fighting tonight, not just against you-know-who, but also for muggleborns, and half bloods and _squibs!_ They were fighting for everyone who is different. Don't you talk back yet! I know that you don't want to be the thing they're fighting for, you want to help them fight, but that's just not possible! We learned seventy-two years ago that we couldn't do magic and both of us have done a pretty foul job of making our lives work otherwise! But you know what? It's not all about magic! We live in the Wizarding world, yes, but the world is not all about actual magical ability!" She takes a deep breath, ignoring my stunned face and continues.

"Do you know why Harry Potter changed the world? Yes, it was because of his magical talent, but it was ALSO because of his personality! I've seen him for years in the library and apart from being good at magic; he's also smart, funny, brave and an amazing friend from the looks of it! What ever happened to 'Daring nerve and chivalry' that we both wanted so much? You know why we haven't changed the world, Argus, because we haven't let ourselves! It's quite possible to be a Gryffindor even without the wand and potion kit! We go around this school, glaring at all of the students and teachers who can use magic when we could be interacting with them! The students at Hogwarts don't hate you and me because we're squibs; they just hate us because we're so bitter about it. If all of the students and teachers and everyone else here fought and died for people like us tonight, the least we can do for them is show us our gratitude. There are some things in life that we just can't do anything about and we've made that our only thought for long enough. Remember when we were eleven and we didn't get our Hogwarts letters? We said then that we would make out lives good anyways, and we haven't! We haven't been the happy in a long time and I think that should change!" She stops yelling and takes a deep breath. I'm staring at her in amazement, completely at a loss for words, but she opens her mouth again to say something. Her voice is quite this time.

"One more thing, Argus. You may think your useless to the world, and maybe you are for everyone else until you do something about it, but you sure as hell mean a lot to me." I gape at her not knowing to say to any of it, but my heart is beating in a way that it hasn't done for a very long time. It feels something like it did when we were young, all those years ago, when I always wanted to kiss her, but never seemed to have the courage. I realize now that that's the type of thing that she's talking about. Being a Gryffindor means more than wand work. This realization seems to be affecting me more than it should and before I realize what I'm doing, I walk forward so I'm right up next to her, lean down and kiss her lightly. Even though it's small, it's everything I had ever wanted in a kiss, especially one that was more that seventy years overdue. It only lasts for a few seconds and when I pull away, she's smiling in a somewhat stunned way.

"Took you long enough." Her voice is light and happy and I'm really feeling a lot better than I was before she walked over. But then again, that's always how it is with Irma Pince.

"You basically told me to, you know. That was the start of me being a Gryffindor without the wand or the potion kit." I smile at her and she raises her eyebrows.

"Oh, it was? Well, if you want, most of the staff has gone to the Hog's Head to celebrate the victory, and you seem to be on quite a roll here. I mean, the teachers certainly wouldn't be expecting us to show up, but-"

"Let's go!" I say, taking her hand. She smiles and I lead her around the maze of debris and out of the great oak double doors. We start to walk down to Hogsmede and I remember the feeling of being young for the first time in seventy-two years.

A/N: I'm not really satisfied with this part... It's a wee bit cheesy (or a lot bit) and the kiss is not how I would have liked, but the thing is, it's rather hard to write old people romance... (espically Filch..) so what have you?

And... I got no reviews for chapter one which makes sennse because who really wants to read a story about filch? Well... If you're feeling really nice, and you feel lie leaving a review... ;)


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